Computer and communication technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace. Indeed, computer and communication technologies are involved in many aspects of a person's day. For example, many devices being used today by consumers have a small computer incorporated within the device. These small computers come in varying sizes and degrees of sophistication. These small computers may vary in sophistication from one microcontroller to a fully-functional complete computer system. For example, small computers may be a one-chip computer, such as a microcontroller, a one-board type of computer, such as a controller, a typical desktop computer, such as an IBM-PC compatible, etc.
Digital images are often described as bitmaps formed of individual pixels. Digital images may result from either real world capture or computer generation. A scanner and/or a digital camera may be used to capture digital images. Computer generation can be performed with the use of a paint program, screen capture, the conversion of a graphic into a bitmap image, etc.
In the simplest type of digital image, each pixel has only one of two values: black or white. For such a digital image, pixel encoding requires only one bit. If shades of gray are present within a digital image, two values are no longer sufficient for pixel encoding. Instead, each pixel is typically assigned a numerical value which is proportional to the brightness of that point. Such a digital image is often referred to as a grayscale image.
The encoding of color digital images takes advantage of the fact that any color can be expressed as a combination of three primary colors, such as red, green, and blue (RGB) or yellow, magenta, and cyan (YMC). Therefore, a color digital image can be thought of as the superposition of three color component planes. Within each plane, the brightness of a primary color is encoded. Some digital images, such as multi-spectral images, may have more than three planes of information.
Often with images it is desirable to reduce the size of an image. For example, a user may wish to reduce an image by 50%. Sometimes computer programs may need to reduce or scale down the size of an image internal to a computer program. In view of the foregoing, benefits may be realized by improvements relating to the way that images or bitmaps are scaled down or reduced in size.